THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 8-8-04: ON LANGUAGE

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 8-8-04: ON LANGUAGE; Groupthink

By William Safire

Published: August 8, 2004

'The committee concluded,'' Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of Senate Intelligence, told the Washington press corps, ''that the intelligence community was suffering from what we call a collective groupthink. . . . [T]his groupthink also extended to our allies and to the United Nations.''

In London a few days later, Lord Butler of Brockwell and his Committee of Privy Counsellors issued a report that investigated ''whether there developed within the intelligence community over a decade of analysis and assessment 'Group Think' or a 'prevailing wisdom. '''

The word is obviously in vogue in the English-speaking world of oversight. Although Chairman Roberts was being redundant when he used collective to modify groupthink, the committee staff was scrupulous in providing an etymology of the headline-provoking word in its 511-page report: ''a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in the 1970's to describe a process in which a group can make bad or irrational decisions as each member of the group attempts to conform their [sic] opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group.''

If the committee's other conclusions are as outdated as its etymology, we're all in trouble. ''Groupthink'' (one word, no hyphen) was the title of an article in Fortune magazine in March 1952 by William H. Whyte Jr. ''Groupthink is becoming a national philosophy,'' he wrote. ''Groupthink being a coinage -- and, admittedly, a loaded one -- a working definition is in order. We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity -- it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity -- an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.'' Whyte derided the notion he argued was held by a trained elite of Washington's ''social engineers.''

The word now means ''the result of successful pressure to conform.'' It is more pejorative than ''conventional wisdom,'' a 1958 coinage of the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, bottomed on ''received wisdom,'' in turn rooted in ''received custom,'' a 1382 church term for the teaching of tradition.

Why do so many of us assume groupthink to be Orwellian? The answer is in its analogy to doublethink, coined by George Orwell in his 1949 novel, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four.'' He defined ''the labyrinthine world of doublethink'' as ''to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.''

I queried Erin McKean, editor of Verbatim, for other think-formations besides the odious sickthink. (Verbatim, the valuable word-study publication that the lexicographer Larry Urdang founded in 1974, will celebrate its 30th volume next year.) She passes along James J. Kilpatrick's newthink, his criticism of ''academic dragoons.'' She also cites oldthink (so five minutes ago) and Timesthink, the definition of which I have no need to determine.

COLLABORATIVE

July was Intelligence Month. Following the lengthy reports on intelligence shortcomings by the U.S. Senate and by Lord Butler in Britain featuring groupthink, along came the 9/11 commission's report. Its most controversial word was collaborative.

What word best describes the sort of relationship, if any, that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had with bin Laden's Qaeda? Bush administration officials, relying on C.I.A. reports, have pointed to a series of contacts over the years that amounted to ''mutual support'' and, in Vice President Cheney's choice of adjectives, ''a longstanding'' and ''an established relationship.'' The 9/11 commission staff at first concluded that these contacts ''do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.'' Hawkish commentators (like me) objected strenuously to this staff formulation; when the final report was issued, signed by all members of the bipartisan commission, a modifier had been added to the controversial phrase, which became ''we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship.''

We don't do politics in On Language. To focus strictly on the words: what does collaborative mean, and what does the addition of operational do to the relationship?

The word labor is right in the middle of collaborate. The co- in front means ''together,'' and the -ate at the end makes it a verb: ''to work together.'' Add an -ive, and you have the adjective collaborative. Synonyms are ''collective, cooperative'' and the most tightly connected, ''joint.''

Evidently the appearance of ''no collaborative relationship'' was too sweeping for some commissioners. Needed was another adjective to narrow the scope. The modifier chosen was operational. The specific sense of ''able to function'' is not what is meant here. A more general sense is defined by the O.E.D. as ''engaged in or connected with active (military) operations, as distinct from being under training, in reserve, etc.'' That modifier satisfied the commissioners who believed that contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq were evidence of sinister cooperation. It also satisfied others who believed that the contacts did not amount to actually working together to conduct terrorist operations. This demonstrates how all it takes to tone down a controversial adjective and make peace in the family is another, unfamiliar adjective.

DOWNHOLD

I recently ordered the Bush administration to ''downhold nondefense spending.'' Readers who could not find this verb in their dictionaries were outraged.

It is newspaper telegraphese. The old United Press, which wanted to hold down its costs, used to wire its overseas correspondents, ''Downhold expenses,'' thereby saving the cost of a word. U.P. reporters called their favorite bar ''the Downhold club.''

To those on usage's ramparts: you uphold tradition. I'll downhold expenses.